Just another WordPress.com site

I suppose, when it comes to romance, “opposites attract.” But, when it comes to politics, it seems more and more that others are more likely to be repulsive than attractive.

The circus that some might call the Brett Kavanaugh hearings certainly proved one thing: the Demos are anything but civil. I watched some of the proceedings (tho, by and large, found them too ludicrous to subject myself to), and admired the man for not getting up and walking out. Clearly, he saw the bigger picture, he saw the prize. And just as irrefutably, the Demos sitting on the panel, as well as those in the galley and on the street, completely lost sight of the bigger picture: the future.

That Trump was legally elected, in full accord with the existing laws of the land, can’t be denied. “He’s there, deal with it.” Have the “Never Trumps” made any effort at all to modify those laws, to somehow change the Electoral College so that someone with the popular vote gets into office? Not that I am aware. They still rail against the man. Still throwing more money after bad. Still living in yesterday. Sure, he’s an easy target; Trump is no politician – if by “politician,” we mean someone who can fool enough people to overlook his warts. However, the first job of a politician is to get into office – and he’s done that. (The second job is to stay in office, and that is TBD.)

No, the horse has left the barn and the Demos continue to lament that someone – never themselves of course – left the door open. Wide open. And now, in the wake of Judge Kavanaugh’s swearing-in, the Demos are pushing the door ever wider. For me, instead of building bridges (trying to look like a reasonable alternative), the Demos are setting the barn on fire.

That Judge Kavanaugh was nominated, and now sworn in, could have been an effort only to humiliate the Demos. Judge Kavanaugh certainly paid a high price; his family has paid a high price. For an appointee, he has been raked over the coals – largely, manufactured and fabricated coals – like we might expect someone running for the highest office in the land. Maybe Judge Kavanaugh is just a surrogate for Trump? What better way to move forward than to give the Demos enough rope to hang themselves with? Self-immolation, more like it.

“You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.” I used to be a card-carrying Democrat. They seemed “kinder and gentler” than the GOP. My, my, my, how they have changed. Not that the Republicans are now hugging trees. But as party made up of individuals, the Demos continue to raise the bar on being uncivil. For years, the Demos have developed a platform that seems to have only one purpose: destroy everything I hold dear.

I’m not saying I have somehow found the Holy Grail of truth, and that I never threw ice on anyone in high school (or, was it college?). But I was taught by the old school: first my parents and then the Marine Corps. I don’t feel all that old; but I do feel like a dinosaur. Yes, we all know what happened to dinosaurs: they all died and now some smaller creature burns the oil and coal that they turned into. Great legacy, huh?

Moving forward to the political arena in months to come, it will be harder and harder for the “guy on the street” to divine the issues and see thru the mud-slinging (I’d like to say “rhetoric”; but that would imply civility, and we no longer have that available to us). And even if I can convince myself that “this person” has the same values as I do, how can I be sure the “system” will respect those values, respect that representation? If my vote ever meant anything besides just a warm feeling, now it feels like a betrayal. Do I continue to participate in a disgustingly flawed political system – and tar myself with the same brush – or, do I withdraw from the playing field. Stick my head in the sand, or do the right thing?

Dunno what the future will bring; but one thing is sure: Judge Kavanaugh is very likely to outlive either President Trump or Hilary Clinton.

Two questions will be answered real soon: (1) What mud will the Demos throw – since they seem to have already fired their best shots at Judge Kavanaugh, and (2) will the GOP lower itself, or take the high road?

(This is the title of an article by Betsy Woodruff in The Daily Beast, as posted on the MSN.com website.)

I have never been a part of the inner workings of any political campaign, but I am under the impression that a lot of people do a lot of planning over many months, if not years. And so, it is beyond me that the “mis-steps,” or “mis-cues,” that everyone agrees emerged in Clinton’s campaign surprised everyone involved – least of all Hillary.

Or, maybe they did. As Betsy says in her article, “’I guess I know the answer,’ Tanden wrote back, ‘they wanted to get away with it’.” This is followed with “[Clinton’s] penchant for secrecy.” Like a freight train out of control, my next thought was “Nixon.” Dontcha just love the irony? Apparently, what brought down Richard Nixon “destroyed” Hillary Clinton.

Is Clinton unaware of what happened to Nixon, or did she think she could “get away with it?” (Is that redundant?)

Obviously, Hillary Clinton has decades of political experience, if only as an observer – but I think, an astute one? Then we have Donald Trump, whom no one has accused of being politically savvy, or an astute political observer, or frankly, of even a business genius.

Someplace on the web, I saw “What Trump says doesn’t bother me as much as what Clinton has done.” So, as little as he’s done, and as much as he’s said – i.e., done too little and said too much – he evidently couldn’t lose to a seasoned political warrior – who should have a resume a mile long and a silver tongue.

Thomas Friedman said he now felt homeless in America. Considering the well publicized comments that Clinton and her staff made about “the Catholic Spring,” I was well on my way to looking at a Canadian visa. True, Trump’s bombast is inflammatory, but between Obama’s treatment of the Defense of Marriage Act (which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996), and Hillary’s insistent that religious beliefs need to be changed, I didn’t feel so much cast adrift as shoved out the door.

I won’t mention Clinton’s vice-president’s comments about the Roman Catholic Church changing.

Did Trump win, or did Clinton lose? It seems that way. It seems that Clinton self-destructed and Trump was the last one standing. Basically, Clinton won the race to the bottom.

I could never have voted for Hillary for pretty much all the same reasons I could never buy a used car from her husband. Which is both interesting and sad: I was a card-carrying Democrat during the Carter years. Now, I can’t distance myself far enough away from the Party of Death and Exclusion.

I can see from the beautiful statistics that WordPress creates for every blogger that my readership has fallen off slightly (since it was never very high, falling “slightly” means fallen to zero). No huge surprise, really: My “day job,” in conjunction with a household move, on top of trying to be a good father (St Joseph, pray for me!) has managed to leave no room on my plate for writing. That I spend at least an hour every day in my prayer life goes without saying.

Well, the move from Kent to Redmond means my commute time got slashed to something closer to half-an-hour, from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. This was not only a savings of time, but also energy. Overtime spent on my “day job” – which some of you know is really a 12-hour night shift – has dried up, so there’s more time and energy. However, the Twins are much more active as they approach ten months old; but what they take in time, they give back ten-fold in joy and energy (ok, more joy than energy).

What this means is that I just might have more resources (time and energy) to write; which I would dearly love (in direct contrast to the job, which I detest).

I do want to take this opportunity to give a huge shout-out to Michael Voris, over at Church Militant (“ChurchMilitant.TV”). In the past, he had made references to his checkered past which I never paid much attention to. First, his past really had no bearing on what I was hearing now. Second, I am certainly in no position to comment on anyone else’s checkered past (I can relate to the Cardinal Sin of Lust). Well, he devoted an entire Vortex segment (“Limiting God”) to the details of his past.

His motivation on sharing at such a level is a threat from the Archdiocese of New York, which is apparently squirming under his criticism. In this age of the internet, it takes next to nothing to find information, so why the Archdiocese thinks shutting him up is any protection only reveals its own stupidity. With the embarrassing Timothy Cardinal Dolan as a spokesman, how could the Archdiocese ever hope to keep out of the limelight? The only question in my mind is why Rome doesn’t reassign Dolan – they did it to Raymond Cardinal Burke (at least now, I know where Malta is).

New Subject:

When I was living overseas (for 17 years), I discovered one of the benefits was being able to easily ignore the craziness of the American presidential race. That luck ran out, and now I find myself completely flummoxed.

As a youngster, I was a card-carrying Democrat (yes, literally). I campaigned (knocking on doors, etc.) for the likes of Mo Udall and Jimmy Carter. Dunno what I had, exactly, against the Republicans (can we say Barry Goldwater?); maybe it was the belief that the Demos actually wanted to improve things, not just hold on to the status quo.

Enter Hillary Clinton. Gee, I thought we were finally rid of Slick Willy. Biden wants a flat screen tv in every living room.

On the other side of the aisle, we’ve got a bunch that is cut from the same political cloth as the clowns in Congress who haven’t done squat in the past eight years.

Then there’s The Donald that is making everybody uneasy – and with good reason. While the big money of traditional politics makes the office-holder accountable to all the wrong people, Trump would be accountable to nothing but his own aggrandizement.

Politics has sunk to new lows.

Finally:

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I love the Twins more and more every day. ‘Course the pressure is on to try to figure out how to cope with those that can’t figure out which bathroom to use. I mean other than keeping them out of public schools, and Target.

I have noticed recent posters on the walls in the building that I work in that talk about workplace violence: “Going to work shouldn’t be like going into a storm.” I have worked for the same company for 29 years, and in this building for the past six, and I have never witnessed anything close to violence. Occasionally, someone will drive a little too fast in the parking lot; but the speed bumps installed last year (or, “traffic calming devices,” as I saw posted in some neighborhood) have greatly reduced those in a hurry to get on with their lives.

Thinking that these “manage workplace violence” posters have been put up in every company building, and not just the one I work in, I guess violence is a company-wide problem. Perhaps, if I wasn’t getting laid-off, I would care. But, I really did think I was a tad more observant….

After all these years however, I never thought this huge company had a sense of humor. I’ve seen some management decisions I thought were ludicrous (most recently, moving about 4,000 jobs out of state in the name of “geographical diversity”; when it is patently obvious that management wants to bust the unions and get rid of older – more expensive – workers). And the way that management is accomplishing this surplusing of “redundant” workers is a comedy of errors. One salaried job family, split roughly in half at two locations (“geographical diversity” at its finest) was ranked to determine the pecking order of who went out the door, and who stayed. The workers at one location were extremely well informed by their supervisor – never any surprises. The workers at the other location were told nothing – absolutely nothing. They didn’t even know all of us were being ranked together.

So, when the 60-day notices were to be distributed, we all knew they were coming; management never told the guys up north. The thing is, they could have been laid off, and one of us could have “bumped” one of them. In fact, two of the group I am in did go north.

However, this morning, as I was getting a cup of coffee in the canteen/kitchen, I happened to notice a safety bulletin taped to the refrigerator door. It had to do with a new company policy on what types of clothing could be worn. Since underwear was specifically mentioned, I am not sure how the company intends to enforce the new policy, but I would be willing to stick around and find out.

My “take away” – that’s one of the latest buzzwords bandied about, along the same lines as “reach out,” and “organizationally agnostic” (I love that one) – was the phrase, “clearly demonstrates a vague causative relationship.” I don’t understand how underwear can clearly demonstrate much of anything, since it would extremely un-PC to notice or say anything about the effect of underwear on someone’s feelings (which is all being PC is about).

Sitting at my desk, scratching my head, I had to resort to the web to try to decipher this phrase.

Under, “vagueness,” Wikipedia offered this: “When used by the merely clueless, vague words make an article confusing and possibly cause readers to misinterpret or even miss important information altogether.” I knew I was on the right track. First, I was reassured, even validated, that the definition of “vague” hadn’t been redefined by the Texters (the millenials that have adapted English to fit their smart phones and thumbs) or the Supreme Court (see my post on “tangible object” back in March). Second, maybe by getting hung up on what a “vague causative relationship” could be, I missed the intent of the safety bulletin?

I’d like to say that I was sufficiently concerned about whatever safety issue was being addressed (however poorly) that I went back to the kitchen to re-read the bulletin. But, as you know, I am only fourteen days away from being out on the street, and I don’t much care what the people who remain in these cubicles wear to work.

Speaking of which, while I don’t consider underwear life-threatening, it is hard to find any literature that says sitting is not detrimental, or maybe even healthy. But, the company has made no efforts at all to encourage, or force, workers to get off their (spreading) derrieres. IMHO (in my humble opinion – a buzzword that is now passé), there definitely is a clear demonstration between lack of activity, sitting too much, eating too much, lower quality of life, and increased morbidity, increased health care costs (or, should I be thanking Obama for that?). To me, there is no vague causative relationship between my current lifestyle and my quality of life.

No, I did not want to get into a discussion of how anybody could put “clear” and vague” in the same sentence, simply because Wikipedia did such a fine job of explaining the logical fallacy (“when used by the merely clueless…”).

Now if we could just ban “yoga pants” (esp for those who should be wearing a tent).